… In a Comic Book 20 Years Old

I read a Richie Rich the other night:
A story run in 1973
that had an uncle travel to the bright
occasion of the coming century
which seemed approaching slowly surely then
(a score plus seven years of life away).
But now it’s little more than six again
until we see 2000 New Years Day.

How suddenly there sometimes falls on me
a bit of obvious, as when a word
correctly spelled will yet appear to be
misspelled: the true looks false, the right absurd
and I am shaken, wakened to a sight
I didn’t see before, in other light.

December 1993